Mobile Technology

Nokia N9 – the first MeeGo-based all-screen smartphone

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Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system
Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system
Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system
Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system
Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system
Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system
Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system
Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system
Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system
Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system
Nokia has unveiled its first smartphone featuring MeeGo mobile operating system - Nokia N9.
Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system
Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system
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Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system. It has no buttons on the front, and features a curved polycarbonate body and a 3.9-inch AMOLED WVGA (854x480) display. The home button is replaced with a swipe gesture, taking the user back to the homescreen from anywhere in the menu. The N9 features a Cortex A8 1GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM, with a PowerVR SGX530 GPU responsible for graphics. It comes with either 64GB or 16GB of internal memory.

The Nokia N9's MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan mobile operating system supports three home views, enabling quick access to the "most important things people do with a modern phone," according to Nokia head of design Marko Ahtisaari. Those things consist of using applications, getting notifications and switching between activities. The first of those three is addressed by allowing the user to launch and organize applications; the second, by allowing them to view missed calls, incoming e-mails, text messages, updates from social networks, etc; and the third, by listing all running applications with the most recently used on top.

Everything is operated through touch only, including the swipe gesture.

Nokia has unveiled the N9, its first smartphone featuring the MeeGo mobile operating system

The phone's polycarbonate body increases the quality of reception and voice, according to Nokia.

Its camera features an 8-megapixel Carl Zeiss autofocus sensor with dual LED flash and HD-quality (720p) video capture capability. GPS is also on board, facilitating the usual Nokia Maps-based free turn-by-turn drive and walk navigation, which is improved with a new dedicated Drive app. There's also a new web browser built on Webkit 2 technology, with "wide HTML 5 support." Connectivity includes pentaband WCDMA, quad band GSM/EDGE, HSDPA and HSUPA, Bluetooth 2.1, WLAN 802.11 b/g/n and NFC support.

The Nokia N9 will appear in stores "later this year," with no pricing announced at this point. It will be offered in three colors: black, magenta and cyan. The scratch-resistant AMOLED screen is Gorilla Glass protected.

It looks like Nokia has not abandoned the MeeGo project yet, despite inking a deal with Microsoft. The N9's success, however, is highly dependent on introducing more MeeGo smartphones or tablets - something that might or might not happen.

The video below illustrates some of the phone's features.

View gallery - 12 images
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5 comments
Michael Mantion
Very well done... one question when you are ready to put it in your pocket do you hit a button?
Fahrenheit 451
\"Very well done... one question when you are ready to put it in your pocket do you hit a button?\" As we most smartphones you have to unlock the device to activate the shell buttons. Although the units shown did not exhibit an unlock screen it was likely owed to this being an info video.
Facebook User
Let\'s hope the new MeeGo is better than what\'s on the N8 (Symbian?). Beautiful phone (N8) with awesome features - but due to the clunky, clumsy, unfriendly OS it may as well be a paper weight!
Rex Alfred Lee
...and suddenly Nokia has become cool again, except for their other smartphones which aren\'t really Nokia anyway, not now that they\'ve sucked-face with Microsux...
alcalde
MeeGo is dead. This was just pushing the last MeeGo device that was being worked on out the door. It\'s a hacker\'s toy.